What Do All The Column Headings Mean?

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I’ve had a lot of questions about the meaning of the various columns of information in the KB spreadsheets. I included some information about this in the guide, under “Niche Keyword Pack Content Key,” but evidently I didn’t include enough detail. So here’s the information again, in more details.

Keyword - obvious, it’s the keyword

Searches Month - global monthly phrase match search volume

Comp. pages - this is supposedly the number of pages Google reports when you type the keyword in quotes (phrase match), but I suspect it’s actually without quotes (broad match). Doesn’t really matter, since I don’t think SKCA uses it for anything.

REAL Comp. pages - say Google says there are 100,000 pages for that keyword. If you keep clicking “next page” at the bottom of the search results, eventually you get to the end of the line, and Google doesn’t display any more, and the number it does actually display is a muchsmaller number – the pages Google thinks are MOST relevant. So for example, if we compare the keywords ‘australian currency exchange’ and ‘easyforex’, if you type them into google in quotes, Google says there are 21,500,000 competing pages for ‘australian currency exchange’ but only 231000 for easyforex. But if you actually delve down into those search results, Google only actually shows you 321 pages for ’australian currency exchange’ as compared to 871 for ‘easyforex’. So just looking at the reported number of competing pages indicates that of the two, ‘australian currency exchange’ should be much harder to rank for, but when we look at the number of pages that Google considers to be
most relevant, it looks like ‘australian currency exchange’ should be easier to rank for.

CPStrength is just a rank assigned by SKCA, and is based on the REAL Comp. pages number. So I don’t know exactly where the cutoff is, but it looks like anything with REAL Comp Pages below 400 is ranked Low, 400 to about 500 is Moderate, and so on.

Average PR Some SEO guys say that the only competition you should care about is the sites on Page 1. That’s what we measure in this one. Average PR is the average PR (Page Rank) of the pages on Google Page 1 for the keyword.

PR Strength, like CP Strength, is just a rank that SKCA assigns based on Average PR. So anything under 2 is Very Low, 2 up to about 2.6 is Low, and so on.

Competition is a rank assigned by SKCA based on CP Strength and PR Strength.
So, really, Competition sums up SKCA’s rating of the overal strength of competition for the keyword, based on two factors: REAL competing pages, and average PR of the sites on Page one.

Commercial is based on some measure of whether people typing the keyword have “Commercial Intent” – Microsoft used to have an online commercial intent tool that you could use to determine commercial intent, but it’s been removed. But this field represents that same kind of ranking. Basically it’s a measure of whether people typing the keyword are likely to be researching with the intent of making a purchase, or just for information.

Ads Count is the number of paid (i.e. Adwords) ads that show up on the first page of the search results for the keyword.

Stealth Rating is the overall rank that SKCA gives to the keyword, based on all of the above except Comp. Pages, which I believe SKCA ignores. So everything to this point is from SKCA and is used to calculate Stealth Rating.

The next few columns are used to calculate the FA (Fast Attack) Rating:

Searches (Phrase) is exactly the same thing as the earlier Searches Month column, except the first one comes from Google, and the second one from Market Samurai. Ultimately, they both come from Google. They are usually identical; any differences are probably due to changes over time, since we didn’t do the Google Took research at the same time as we did the MS analysis.

SEO Comp is also from Market Samurai, and should theoretically be the same as the earlier Comp. Pages number, which comes from SKCA. They are usually quite different, though, which is why I think SKCA is actually reporting broad match results, not phrase match.

Adwords CPC (Phrase) is Market Samurai’s estimate of what you might have to pay in Adwords to be the number one ad on the page for a phrase match search. It’s useful only as a guideline to the Commercial Intent of the keyword, and as a relative rank for figuring out which keywords are better for Adsense monetization. It does NOT accurately represent what you as the publisher can expect to be paid for Adsense clicks.

FA Rating is the rating we assign based on Craig’s system – it’s calculated based entirely on Searches (Phrase) and SEO Comp.

Then the last 3 columns are pretty simple:

Both is True if a the SKCA Rating is either Good, Great, or Amazing, AND the FA Rating is Easy, Realistic, or Dream. So these are the “Solid Gold” keywords.

FA Only is True if the FA Rating is Easy, Realistic, or Dream, but the Stealth Rating is Bad or Terrible. These are the “Fast Attack” keywords.

SKCA Only is True if the Stealth rating is Good, Great or Amazing, but the FA Rating is XXX (i.e., not Easy, Realistic, or Dream). These are the “Stealth” keywords.

What About Misspelled Words?

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Question: Evert, from Gorssel, Netherlands. asked:

I’m planning to use these keywords to create niche specific YouTube video on several niche specific YouTube Channels.

I see there are many misspelling keyword phrases and also keyword phrases that don’t flow normally.

Can I use these kind of keywords in the title and description in YouTube as well as in the videos itself?

Will Google and/or Youtube not ban me because of the use of these misspelling keywords and keyword phrases that not flow naturally?

Do you make use of misspellings and keyword phrases that don’t flow naturaly on other ways than YouTube?

I mean are these kinds of words usable or can I simply delete them from your lists.
In this case your lists have much less keywords than you promise.

Can you let me know some ways I can use these keyword phrases?

Thanks!

Kind Regards,

Evert

Answer:

I haven’t really done too much with YouTube so I’m not sure about how they handle misspellings. What I’d suggest you try is to search on youtube for some common misspellings and see what comes up. You should be able to judge from that whether it will be a problem.
Misspellings and keyword phrases that don’t flow naturally are GREAT for paid traffic, like Google Adwords.
In my opinion, they are NOT so good if you’re trying to build an authority site, for reasons that I think should be obvious.
If you’re building, say, an adsense site, misspellings can work – it’s your call whether to use them. So you could have a page on your site optimized for the phrase with the correctly spelled word, and another page for the same phrase with the misspelled word. If you’re mass-producing little 10-15 page adsense sites, I don’t see any problem with this.
Also, keep in mind that google ignores punctuation and certain small words like a, an, for, is, the, and so forth. So that means that if you had a phrase like “cream for skin,” you can do the trick where you have something like this in your article:
. . .  is an excellent cream. Skin care products are usually . . .
or even
. . .  is an excellent cream. For skin care products to be used correctly, you must . . .
Thanks,
Bob

In the Keyword Bonanza Spreadsheets, Why Doesn’t the CPC Match What Google Says?

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Question: Gabriella, from Rome, Italy, asked:

Hello,

I looked at some of your keywords and I noticed that the CPC doesn’t correspond to the one I see on the google keyword tool.
Example:

babor skin care

Keyword Bonanza shows 100 CPC while on the Google keyword tool it’s only 1,77…

why?
thanks

Answer:

Both CPC numbers are estimates of what an advertiser would pay when using Google Adwords to place an ad on the Search Network. The CPC that the Google tool reports is, according to Google, “averaged over all the ad positions”. The CPC that Market Samurai reports is “an indication of what you might expect to pay to be the #1 ranked advertiser for a particular keyword in Google.” I think it’s this factor that is causing the biggest portion of the large difference for that particular keyword.
The other factors that might cause differences are:
  • Changes over time (i.e. the CPC can change from the time I did my keyword research to the time you are looking up keywords on the Google tool).
  • Geographical differences (my Market Samurai settings are set to English, All Countries and Territories, but you may be getting back search results specific to your location).
  • Search type (whether you are getting results for Broad match, Phrase match, or Exact match).
For example, when I use Market Samurai today for that keyword, with geography set to All Countries and Territories, I get a phrase match CPC of $31.27 – much lower than when I did the original research a month or two ago. For the same keyword, but with geography set to Australia, the corresponding figure is $5.65. And for Italy, it’s $0.00. The Google Adwords tool reports $2.39 for All Countries, $0.99 for Australia, and $0.00 for Italy. With Geography set to All Countries and Territories, Market Samurai reports $26.88 for Broad match, $31.27 for Phrase match, and $60.27 for Exact match. The corresponding figures from the Adwords tool are $2.40, $2.39, and $2.40.
Thanks,
Bob

In the Keyword Bonanza Spreadsheets, What Does CP Mean?

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Question: Wanda, from Louisiana, USA, asked:

Hey Bob,
I see where you posted in the thread on the forum a couple of times about what CP means. I still don’t quite understand. Strength of competition = high or very high =Hard to me.

Can you clarify please. I was looking at weightloss niche words and almost all of them say high to very high cp value. I take that to mean the competition is heavy or hard to knock off . But you say all of the words are filtered in the range we can compete in. I know I must be missing something. 

I would appreciate your thoughts on this.
Answer:
Yes, all of these keywords have been filtered and should be rankable. In this approach, you need to choose a number of rankable keywords (Craig Mako recommends 18), ideally with a mixture of Easy, Realistic, Dream FA ratings and/or Good, Great or Amazing SKCA ratings to build your site around.

 

Then you create content for all 18 keywords, drip feed the content to your site, and apply the rest of the method. In the end, you should get some of your pages ranked on Google page one. Maybe not all of them, but by choosing keywords that have passed these tests, and applying the method consistently, some of them will hit page one — and stay there

Sometimes it will turn out that a keyword that looks — by the numbers — harder to rank for will rank more easily than one that looks to be easier.

 

For keywords that are classified as rankable according to the Fast Attack analysis method, we completely ignore CP Strength. We only look at SEOC as reported by Market Samurai.

 

We sort keywords into three groups based on the criteria described in Fast Attack SEO: Easy keywords have 1,000+ searches per month and up to 50,000 SEOC, Realistic keywords have 2,500+ searches and up to 250,000 SEOC, and Dream keywords have 5,000+ searches and up to 500,000 SEOC.
As you go from Easy up to Dream, the keywords get progressively harder to rank for and progressively more rewarding when you rank for them.

For keywords that are classified as rankable according to the SKCA analysis method, CP Strength is only one of several factors that go into the total ranking. I don’t know the exact algorithm that SKCA uses to classify keywords, but it’s clear to me that first, CP Strength and PR Strength (which measures the average Page Rank of the top ten pages in Google) are combined to produce the value in the “Competition” column. That column is then used in conjunction with the values in the “Commercial” and “Ads Count” columns to produce the overall SKCA rating for the keyword.

 

So the short version of all that is: in the Fast Attack method, we ignore CP Strength altogether and use SEOC; in the SCKA method, CP Strength and PR Strength are used together to gauge “Competition,” which is then used as the overall gauge of how easy a keyword will be to rank. No keywords with “Competition” rated High or Very High are included as rankable keywords.
Thanks,
Bob